20060626

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1150885858215&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinterOlmert and his associates claim that the IDF deployment in Gaza was wasteful because all those forces were being used just to defend those annoying, fanatical settlers in Gush Katif and northern Gaza. But as the bombardment and the IDF's inability to stop the bombardment from outside Gaza shows, the IDF was not in Gaza to protect the Israelis who lived there. The IDF was in Gaza to protect Israel.Any major IDF offensive in Gaza would constitute an admission of this truth. Yet since the government's only policy is to reenact last summer's retreat in Judea and Samaria, it cannot acknowledge this truth. It needs the public to believe that the safety of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can be guaranteed by having IDF forces sitting in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It needs the public to believe that settlers are the cause of their misfortunes and not the jihadists who are waging war against our country.That is, they need the public to believe that empowering terrorists doesn't empower terrorists.FINALLY, OLMERT cannot allow a counter-terror offensive in Gaza because doing so will lead to international condemnation of Israel. It isn't the impact of the condemnation Israel's international standing that concerns him. Olmert cannot be condemned internationally because he promised that after Israel retreated from Gaza, the international community would accept any Israeli counter-terror offensives in Gaza.Sunday's attack and Cpl. Shalit's kidnapping are watershed events. In the coming days and weeks, it will become self-evident to the Israeli public as a whole just how indefensible Olmert's plan to empower terrorists actually is. Yet public recognition of his plan's failure is not enough.In 2000, the public realized that Barak's terrorist empowering peace plan had brought us war. Yet rather than discard the policy of empowering terrorists, our political leaders simply repackaged it. What had formerly been called "peace" was called "separation" and "disengagement" and now is called "convergence" or "realignment." These euphemisms are sold to the public in turn as new quick-fixes that spare us the need to recognize the reality of war.

20060622

Since their arrival on the world scene as a “quasi-national” entity in 1948, the Palestinian Arabs have been cynically exploited by their own brethren. The best public relations mechanism that money can buy has turned the theme of the “underdog” into a deliberate operational strategy. This well-oiled and well-funded propaganda machine has turned the tables, and transformed tiny, beleaguered Israel, surrounded by millions of hostile Arabs, into an apparently belligerent and ugly Goliath. As Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote on June 16, 2006, “the Palestinians prefer victim-hood to state-hood”: http://http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/15/AR2006061501794.html"My heart truly goes out to the Palestinian Arabs living in the Gaza Strip – spurned by the Egyptians and the Arab world from 1948 until 1967, living under Israeli occupation from 1967, and now forced to live in a war zone by their incompetent leaders. They live in squalor and poverty. They have no jobs to go to, and no food to put on the table. They deserve better. Ironically, their quality of life was considerably better under the Israeli occupation. Now they have nothing. Their hatred and bitterness is nourished by their leaders, and directed against Israel. But who is ultimately to blame for their plight?" In one of our first presentations, “History in a Nutshell”, we wrote that if the Arabs had accepted the United Nations’ Partition Plan, they would already have celebrated the 58th year of Arab Palestine as an independent state. But it seems that nothing has changed in their mentality. There are now no Israeli soldiers or military facilities inside Gaza. There are no Israeli settlers in Gaza. In fact, since the disengagement last summer, [b]Gaza IS the first independent Palestinian Arab state. Instead of laying the foundations for a new and vibrant nation, Gaza has become an area of rampant anarchy, a launching-ground for missiles against Israeli civilians well inside the Green Line, with rival terrorist factions chaotically fighting each other inside Gaza at the same time as they continue hostilities against Israel. We wonder if the Palestinian Arabs are even capable of living in a democracy."